Burnout

After a remarkably successful month of fiction writing, in which I believe I wrote over 9,000 words' worth of fiction (and I didn't intend to include that reference, but apparently I did), I have found myself in the regrettable position of feeling completely unmotivated as far as my writing is concerned and with barely even the ability to write semi-coherent poems.

My problem is that I am far too real of the fictitious nature of fiction right now. Fiction is imaginary; we all know that. We all ought to know that. However, we should never have to know that fiction is fake, and especially not when we're reading it, and especially not when we're writing it. It's said that, if you don't believe in your story, no one will, and I personally can't bring myself to believe in any story, my own included.

It's one thing to read someone else's fiction, something that didn't originate in your own mind and thus something you could possibly believe in. It's quite another to write your own and understand, from the beginning of the process to the end, that you have come up with this, that it is your job to make it good and make others believe in it. It's almost like being expected to take shelter in a structure you're currently building.

I can't think of a single tale worth telling, a single story that hasn't been written before, a single character or idea or concept worth believing in. It's been great so far but frankly, I'm exhausted right now, and if I'm going to be even more frank, I've been exhausted ever since last year, as far as writing and being able to tell good stories has gone, and it hasn't gotten significantly better.

I'll be frank again. I hate talking about this weakness on this blog, because while I'm (thankfully) nowhere remotely near being a "famous writer" and thus don't have "famous writer" expectations on me (i.e. to be a shining example to all other writers out there), I do know there are people who read this who look up to me as a writer, and to them, I am the "shining example", and being so blatant and nearly pessimistic (even though the pessimism is caused by perceptions of my current reality and expectations made by judging off of the continual nature of this reality)...well, I just don't think it's good. There are other places I can essentially complain, why am I doing it here?

That's a very good question and I haven't got an answer, but maybe it's to show that writing, at its heart, is a very miserable business and we do it anyway and I don't know why and it probably makes us insane but it's what we do so we do it. And that tiny part of me that isn't stained with cynicism and that doesn't regard reality wants to say that, even if we could choose not to, we'd never consider doing anything but what we're doing.